About 1,900 personnel are on the ground fighting wildfires in B.C., about 800 to 900 of them with the B.C. Wildfire Service.
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The wildfire season in B.C. is starting to ramp up.
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Following a quiet early-season start, wildfire activity has jumped significantly since mid-July, after about 34,000 lightning strikes hit the province in a weeklong period.
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So far, about 975 square kilometres have burned, or less than one third the size of Metro Vancouver. Most of that in the southern half of the province. The total is much smaller than the 20-year average of 5,100 square kilometres or the area burned in extreme years which has topped more than 10,000, and even 20,000 square kilometres for the whole season.
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But there are two months left in the fire season — and there are fires raging in parts of the province where it is expected to continue to be hot, dry and windy, and where the forest is loaded with fuel.
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There’s also more lightning in the forecast.
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“I think we are just now starting the core of the our wildfire season here in British Columbia,” Ravi Parmar, B.C.’s forests minister, said in an interview on Friday.
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He said the wildfire service’s initial attack success rate to date, keeping 90 per cent of fires under five hectares, is likely to be challenged in the weeks ahead.
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“We expect to see some pretty extreme fire behaviour in the southern half of the province,” said Parmar.
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The province is already gearing up for increased wildfire activity, including making provisions to bring in out-of-country firefighters if necessary, he said.
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There are more than 100 active fires in the province, with growing major fire complexes in the Boston Bar area in the Fraser Canyon, in the Clinton area of the Cariboo, and near Kimberley in the southern Interior, some of which have burned homes and resulted in evacuations and alerts.
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About 1,900 personnel are on the ground fighting wildfires in B.C., about 800 to 900 of them with the B.C. Wildfire Service.
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The province also utilizes personnel from the forest sector and contractors to help bolster the firefighting force.
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About 105 helicopters and other fixed-wing aircraft are being used to tackle the blazes.
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And for the first time, the province used drones to light back fires to help stop the advance of wildfire in the Boston Bar area.
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Robert Gray, a wildfire ecologist with decades of experience in B.C., said even if this season does not end up burning a large area, or become a record year, smaller fires can be very consequential.
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That can include homes burning and major highways and railways being closed, as has happened in B.C. this fire season, which can have a huge impact on commerce, he noted.
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And the smoke can have significant health impacts on people, said Gray.
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“You don’t have to burn a half a million hectares to have a really big, bad impact,” said Gray, who contributed to the 2003 firestorm provincial review, which launched B.C.’s approach to building wildfire resiliency.
